The Lovely Horrible Stuff by Eddie Campbell - review

If the freelancer's first question is "will this do?", the second is usually "where's the money?". The answer, as writer and cartoonist Eddie Campbell finds out in this warts-and-all memoir-cum-investigation, is everywhere and nowhere. Campbell gets a lot of it for the rights to his superlative From Hell (the Ripper-obsessed series he created with Alan Moore), which he then lends to his father-in-law, who spends most of it on legal fees. He rows with his daughter, rows with his wife and sets up his own company to ease the creation of a new Batman comic. Campbell is more concerned with weird facts and flights of fancy than with rigorous analysis, and the book's indulgent early sections drift somewhat, but things pick up in the thoroughly enjoyable second half as Campbell heads to the Micronesian island of Yap, where for centuries people used great stone disks – up to 10ft in diameter – as money. Campbell's sketches have a surreal, scruffy elegance, and are spun together with photos, newspaper reports and bubblegum cards in a quirky, vibrant graphic novel.

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